Reflections

The composing of purely instrumental and orchestral music is a road I have only occasionally had the opportunity to take. Don’t get me wrong: as a composer mainly associated with choral music, I love the sound of choirs with all my heart, but I am equally thrilled by the sound of an orchestra and its individual instruments, and I have always found that writing for orchestra in particular comes naturally to me. I could no more delegate the orchestration of my choral music accompaniments to someone else than I could ask someone else to eat my dinner for me. I remember being startled when a well-meaning audience member at one of my choral concerts with orchestra asked if I did my own orchestrations; when I said yes, he looked puzzled – ‘Oh, some of them sounded quite good, I thought you must have had them done professionally’. Ouch.

So, why so much choral music? I don’t really know, except that any young composer responds to the opportunities that come along, and in my early years they mostly came from choral organizations, not from orchestras or opera companies. My advice to any young composer – notwithstanding Chopin with piano music and Verdi with opera –  is don’t let yourself get pigeonholed.
Write across as many genres as you can. Britten’s choral music is very fine – but so are his operas, his chamber works, his concertos . . . 

If I failed to take my own advice as a composer, at least I managed to spread myself across several spheres of musical activity: I have always enjoyed conducting, inspired by watching the three great Bs of composer/conductors, Britten, Bernstein and Boulez. In my earlier years, I liked teaching, until I reluctantly had to drop it for simple lack of time to continue with it. More recently I have found unexpected satisfaction in the role of recording producer, where you have to be both cheerleader and critic, coaxing the very best from your performers. And I have tried to act as an ambassador for music, responding to widely scattered invitations to lead singing days for anyone who enjoys choral singing or wants to give it a try, giving talks, writing to political leaders making the case for music, occasionally signing a petition or two.

My orchestral pieces (all too few of them) have until recently been my neglected children, and it has been a joy to bring several of them together into an all-star recording – Reflections. Steven Osborne, pianist extraordinaire, and my good friends the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have done the music proud, and I thank them as both composer and conductor from the bottom of my heart. https://johnrutter.lnk.to/Reflections